I actively coach my team and fight for their promotions & compensation when they deserve it. One of them climbed 6 levels in just 4 years, now only 2 levels below me. Now, he is quite mature and, with proper coaching, I think he can replace me in 3 – 5 years. I am sincerely proud of and happy for him. I see him as one of my proudest success stories.
However, no matter what you do, people will always have something to say.
- “Do you ever regret coaching a team that might surpass you?” – an intriguing opinion I never thought of
- “Aren’t you raising your own competitors?” – another intriguing opinion
- “A true leader creates more leaders” – an encouraging opinion
- “You really have a way to coach people” – a praise
Naturally, my mind lingered more on the negative comments (the first two). This morning, I reflected on them, and, voila, here is my thought process. But for those who prefer a quick takeaway: I have no regrets. Why?
In leadership, the real threat is not being outshined by your mentees. It’s becoming stagnant and have no personal growth while others evolve. There’s a saying,
“Train your team so well they can leave, treat them so well they don’t want to.”
I have lived with this principle for 15-year career. I choose to train them so well they can lead, even if that means surpassing me. To me, it also means, there will be better opportunities opened up for me.
For you who want to dive deeper and have time to read further, here is my detailed explanation:
Responsibilities
Developing team member is not optional, it is a fundamental part of leadership. As a perfectionist, failing to develop my team would feel like personal incompetence, even worse than failing to deliver strong portfolio insight to management. I cannot allow anyone under my watch remain stagnant without putting my utmost effort to develop them. Ignoring this responsibility won’t just limit our team’s progress, it will eventually boomerang. If you’re not seriously developing your team, who will?
Culture of complacency is the real threat
Competing with your mentee is not scary. It might happen, but only if you’re not growing along with them. But that’s the least of your worries. Without strong development efforts, your team will eventually split into 2 groups:
- Happy yet incompetent employees, comfortable doing the bare minimum, or
- Competent yet unsatisfied & frustated employees, who eventually leave for better opportunities.
Both outcomes will leave you with a mediocre team, hurting your departments and the company. By prioritizing people development, you build a culture of learning, support, and trust. They will feel valued, stop seeing others as threats, and naturally share knowledge.
In my experience, this leads to higher job satisfaction, stronger loyalty, greater confidence in discussion, and a deeper sense of belonging. These all will strengthen bond within team, lower turnover rate, and increase department’s performance.
Incompetitive performance and reward system
If you’re not developing enough, you will not be able to differentiate the benefit of the good from the mediocre. Thus, the rewards, both compensation benefit and career path, are difficult to be merit-based. Why?
After all, how can you fairly label someone mediocre if you’ve never truly coached them. During performance review, this question will eventually pop up: “Have you done everything in your power to develop this person?”. If not, you’ll then write a plain-vanilla assessment, resulting in equal rewards regardless of performance.
When growth isn’t properly rewarded, motivation shrinks, and mediocrity will be more common. Your departments risks becoming stagnant, not achieving excellence, and not striving to boost company’s performance. This will be company’s opportunity lost, as well as ours.
Bottleneck in our own growth
If you don’t teach and grow your team, you will stay the smartest and the busiest, endlessly covering the gaps. You’ll have no time to learn and do the next big things, build strategic capabilities, or position your team for promotion. Simply put, no promotion for your team means no successor for you. How can you expect to move up if management sees that you’re the only one holding things together?
It doesn’t signal trust. It signals you’re not yet ready to leave your current post and move forward. Now, does that sound like a blessing? Of course not, this becomes our biggest obstacle.
The beauty of being a leader is not retaining the power to ourselves, but developing others so that they can take over our tasks. How about us? We will have more free time to learn the next big things and signal to management that we’re ready for the next level. That way, we will stay relevant and valuable no matter how high our mentees climb.
Path of growth without office mentor
What if our boss doesn’t really care about our development? With today’s technology, we can curate and build our own learning curriculum. We can apply what we learn through side projects or requesting stretch opportunities from management. Learning on our own can feel tedious but still deeply rewarding.
Conclusion
Mentorship is a two-way street. While we, as mentors, provides guidance, we also gain fresh perspectives and insights from our mentees. This reciprocal relationship encourages self-reflection and continuous personal development.
As a leader, we are in a position to create culture. Make sure it’s a positive one. Keep spreading positive habits. This openness and sincerity will open doors to new opportunities. Don’t let the fear get the best of you. Keep coaching, keep mentoring, keep developing, keep learning, keep growing.
If company still doesn’t appreciate us, it might be the pot is too small for our roots to grow. That’s okay. It might mean we’re ready for bigger fields and still leaving a meaningful legacy. 🙂 Do you have similar experience like mine? Let me know your thoughts in below comments. 🙂
The Hayyan Chronicle 
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